A rendering from Boring Company proposal to build a high-speed transit system connecting O'Hare International Airport and downtown Chicago.

Boring Company

CHICAGO – Elon Musk's Boring Company has been tapped to build a futuristic transportation system using high-powered electric “skates” to carry passengers between O’Hare International Airport and downtown Chicago.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Thursday that his administration is entering one-on-one negotiations with the Musk company to build the high-speed system that will utilize electric vehicles running through twin underground tunnels.

If Emanuel and Musk, who is also the CEO of electric-car company Tesla, are able to reach a final deal, it would then need approval from Chicago’s city council.

The proposed system would transport passengers between O’Hare, one of the nation’s busiest airports, and downtown in 12 minutes, according to the Boring Company's proposal. Currently, it takes passengers riding the city’s train system about 45 to 50 minutes to make the roughly 16-mile trip between downtown and O’Hare. Taking a taxi or ride-share can take even longer.

The mayor hopes to start construction on the project within a year and complete the project within four years.

"It will take longer to get through security at O’Hare than it will take to get to O'Hare," Emanuel predicted. "This is the fast lane to Chicago’s future."

Boring Company says it will pay the entire cost of building the system.

The company indicated in its proposal to the city that fares on its transportation system of the future – although not yet set – would cost more than the current $5 fare between O’Hare and downtown but less than the cost of a cab ride, which typically costs about $40.

The deal puts Musk a step closer to making his Boring Company's vision a reality. Mass transit advocates have expressed skepticism about the viability of a vast network of underground tunnels due to high costs and bureaucratic hurdles. But Musk’s tentative deal with Chicago suggests that his company may be making progress in its goal to reduce the price of tunnel digging while increasing the speed of the notoriously slow process.

“I think if you look at someone’s track record or a company’s track record…it’s reasonable to extrapolate into what it would do in the future,” Musk said about criticism of the effort. “I’ve done a few things in my background that I think are pretty tricky.”

Musk added: "If it succeeds it will be a great thing for the city. If it fails, me and others will lose a whole bunch of money."

This foray into building tunnels for high-speed transportation is relatively new. The Boring Company was launched about 18 months ago and has been digging a test tunnel in Los Angeles for a high-speed public transit system called the Loop.

The concept behind the Loop has changed over the months. Most recently, Musk said that it no longer would provide the skates for cars to race beneath the surface but instead will focus on transporting pedestrians and cyclists.

In an animation released by the Boring Company in March, pedestrians are shown on the street surface boarding buses and being lowered into the tunnel by an elevator system.

Musk has also received approval from Maryland to dig tunnels for a Loop system that would provide a transportation alternative to commuters in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, but work has not yet started on that project.

The futuristic-looking electric skates – battery-powered, zero-emission vehicles – are modeled after the Tesla Model X SUV, according to Boring Company. The O’Hare line, which has been dubbed the Chicago Express Loop, would use a concrete track within the tunnel, and passenger-carrying skates will be able to travel at speed up to 150 miles per hour.

Each electric skate features a climate-controlled cabin, luggage storage space and Wi-Fi. Boring Company projects that the system will run up to 20 hours per day, seven days a week with electric skates departing as quickly as every 30 seconds.

Each electric skate could carry eight to 16 passengers or a single-passenger vehicle, according to a Boring Company fact sheet.

Elon Musk's Boring Company is Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's pick to build a high-speed transit system connecting O'Hare International Airport and downtown Chicago. This rendering shows the company's proposal for its O'Hare station.

Boring Company

Chicago’s requests-for-proposal for a high-speed transit system called for bidders to include plans for downtown and O’Hare stations. The RFP also called for designers to build a system that could provide travel times of 20 minutes or less with no more than 15 minutes between train departures for most of the day. The city also called for fares to be less than the cost of current taxi and ride-share services.

Boring Company's push hinges on cutting the cost of building tunnels – currently construction costs up to $1 billion per mile – and marrying it with electric-vehicle technology. It hopes to lower the costs of tunneling in part by narrowing the diameter of tunnels for such high-speed projects.

The effort has been met with some skepticism from experts.

"The concept of car elevators on skates add a bunch of engineering challenges, such as reliability and safety of the elevator, loading and unloading times, and the number of dedicated areas in a city you'd need to do this at scale," Constantine Samaras, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, told "Forbes" earlier this year.

Contributing: Nathan Bomey in McLean, Virginia, and Marco della Cava in San Francisco

Elon Musk: Tech pioneer

Elon Musk CEO of SpaceX, speaks to the media during a press conference after the Falcon Heavy Launch on Feb. 6, 2018.

Tesla founder Elon Musk presenting the new Roadster electric sports vehicle (on background), presented to media on Nov. 16, 2017 at Tesla's Los Angeles design center. Tesla says the Roadster will accelerate from 0-60 mph in less than two seconds. Tesla says the new Roadster will cost $200,000 and will be released in three years.

PayPal Chief Executive Officer Peter Thiel, left, and founder Elon Musk, right, pose with the PayPal logo at corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., on Oct. 20, 2000. Elon Musk made his fortune off PayPal. Online auction giant eBay Inc. announced Monday, July 8, 2002, it would buy the electronic payment facilitator for more than $1.3 billion in stock.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulates teams competing on the Hyperloop Pod Competition II at SpaceX's Hyperloop track in Hawthorne, Calif on Aug. 27, 2017. A committee of the Los Angeles City Council on April 18, 2018, approved an environmental review exemption for a Los Angeles-area tunnel that Elon Musk wants to dig to test a novel underground transportation system.

SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in the world, lifts off on it first demonstration flight. The rocket leapt off Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:45pm. on Feb. 6, 2018.

This image from video provided by SpaceX shows Elon Musk's red Tesla sports car with a dummy driver named "Starman" which was launched into space during the first test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket on Feb. 6, 2018.

The twin boosters from SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy make a successful landing at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Feb. 6, 2018.

President Trump talks with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, center, and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon during a meeting with business leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Feb. 3, 2017.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk speaks about the Interplanetary Transport System which aims to reach Mars with the first human crew in history, in the conference given by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk during the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico on September 27, 2016.

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk unveils the Model X at a launch event in Fremont, Calif on Sept. 29, 2015. The Tesla Motors X is an all-wheel drive SUV featuring a 90 kWh battery providing 250 miles of range and will be able to go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds.

CEO and Chief Product Architect of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk shows of his throwback t-shirt of the "Tesla" heavy metal band on January 24, 2015 in Park City, Utah.

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, discusses new technologies before an event for Tesla owners and the media held at the Hawthorne Airport. In the background is a Tesla model P85D.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveils SpaceX's new seven-seat Dragon V2 spacecraft, in Hawthorne, California on May 29, 2014. The private spaceflight companys new manned space capsule is designed to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The capsule was named for "Puff the Magic Dragon," a jab at those who scoffed when Musk founded the company in 2002 and set the space bar exceedingly high. SpaceX went on to become the first private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and return it safely to Earth in 2010.

Elon Musk CEO, Cofounder, Chief Product Architect for Tesla with a new Model S car outside the Tesla customer delivery area at the Tesla Fremont factory on June 21, 2012.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, poses with a Tesla car in front of Nasdaq following the electric automakerís initial public offering on June, 29, 2010, in New York.

Tesla Motors president and CEO Ze'ev Drori, left, and Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk, right, pose in the Tesla Motors development facility in San Carlos, just south of San Francisco next to a Tesla Roadster on Feb. 19, 2008. The Tesla Roadster, a $99,000 electric sports car powered by laptop computer batteries, is 100 percent electric, can go from 0-60 mph in four seconds and the electric car gets an equivalent of 135 mpg compared to a gas powered vehicle. Production begins mid-March. The car itself is being made in England.

Elon Musk stands in front of parts of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket at the company's headquarters in El Segundo, Calif. on Sept. 18, 2007.

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Elon Musk CEO of SpaceX, speaks to the media during a press conference after the Falcon Heavy Launch on Feb. 6, 2018.

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Tesla founder Elon Musk presenting the new Roadster electric sports vehicle (on background), presented to media on Nov. 16, 2017 at Tesla's Los Angeles design center. Tesla says the Roadster will accelerate from 0-60 mph in less than two seconds. Tesla says the new Roadster will cost $200,000 and will be released in three years.

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PayPal Chief Executive Officer Peter Thiel, left, and founder Elon Musk, right, pose with the PayPal logo at corporate headquarters in Palo Alto, Calif., on Oct. 20, 2000. Elon Musk made his fortune off PayPal. Online auction giant eBay Inc. announced Monday, July 8, 2002, it would buy the electronic payment facilitator for more than $1.3 billion in stock.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk congratulates teams competing on the Hyperloop Pod Competition II at SpaceX's Hyperloop track in Hawthorne, Calif on Aug. 27, 2017. A committee of the Los Angeles City Council on April 18, 2018, approved an environmental review exemption for a Los Angeles-area tunnel that Elon Musk wants to dig to test a novel underground transportation system.

05/17

SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy, the most powerful rocket in the world, lifts off on it first demonstration flight. The rocket leapt off Pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida at 3:45pm. on Feb. 6, 2018.

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This image from video provided by SpaceX shows Elon Musk's red Tesla sports car with a dummy driver named "Starman" which was launched into space during the first test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket on Feb. 6, 2018.

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The twin boosters from SpaceX's newest rocket, the Falcon Heavy make a successful landing at Landing Zone 1 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on Feb. 6, 2018.

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President Trump talks with Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, center, and White House chief strategist Steve Bannon during a meeting with business leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, Feb. 3, 2017.

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Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk speaks about the Interplanetary Transport System which aims to reach Mars with the first human crew in history, in the conference given by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk during the 67th International Astronautical Congress in Guadalajara, Mexico on September 27, 2016.

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Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk unveils the Model X at a launch event in Fremont, Calif on Sept. 29, 2015. The Tesla Motors X is an all-wheel drive SUV featuring a 90 kWh battery providing 250 miles of range and will be able to go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds.

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CEO and Chief Product Architect of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk shows of his throwback t-shirt of the "Tesla" heavy metal band on January 24, 2015 in Park City, Utah.

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Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, discusses new technologies before an event for Tesla owners and the media held at the Hawthorne Airport. In the background is a Tesla model P85D.

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SpaceX CEO Elon Musk unveils SpaceX's new seven-seat Dragon V2 spacecraft, in Hawthorne, California on May 29, 2014. The private spaceflight companys new manned space capsule is designed to ferry NASA astronauts to and from the International Space Station. The capsule was named for "Puff the Magic Dragon," a jab at those who scoffed when Musk founded the company in 2002 and set the space bar exceedingly high. SpaceX went on to become the first private company to launch a spacecraft into orbit and return it safely to Earth in 2010.

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Elon Musk CEO, Cofounder, Chief Product Architect for Tesla with a new Model S car outside the Tesla customer delivery area at the Tesla Fremont factory on June 21, 2012.

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Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, poses with a Tesla car in front of Nasdaq following the electric automakerís initial public offering on June, 29, 2010, in New York.

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Tesla Motors president and CEO Ze'ev Drori, left, and Tesla Motors chairman Elon Musk, right, pose in the Tesla Motors development facility in San Carlos, just south of San Francisco next to a Tesla Roadster on Feb. 19, 2008. The Tesla Roadster, a $99,000 electric sports car powered by laptop computer batteries, is 100 percent electric, can go from 0-60 mph in four seconds and the electric car gets an equivalent of 135 mpg compared to a gas powered vehicle. Production begins mid-March. The car itself is being made in England.

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Elon Musk stands in front of parts of the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket at the company's headquarters in El Segundo, Calif. on Sept. 18, 2007.